Protein crystallography is on the brink of being taken to a new level with the introduction of the X-ray free electron laser, which may be used to solve the structures of complex proteins via serial femtosecond crystallography, for example. Sample crystal characteristics play a role in successful implementation of this new technology, whereby a small, uniform protein crystal size is desired to provide high quality diffraction data. Identifying the conditions of nanocrystal growth and characterizing nanocrystal quality are two limitations in serial femtosecond crystallography. Typically, protein samples may be difficult to retrieve and the sample amount is a pivotal factor in crystallization studies, in particular for large protein complexes such as membrane proteins.